The scaling down of the manufacturing rule has been advanced in order to achieve higher integration in a dynamic random access memory (DRAM), but it has become difficult to manufacture a capacitor for providing sufficient signals. Thus, a resistance change memory cell in which a resistance change element is used in place of the capacitor to form a memory cell and the magnitude of a resistance value is made to correspond to logic information “1” and “0” has been contrived.
As an example of the resistance change memory, a phase change memory, a magnetic RAM (MRAM), a resistive RAM (ReRAM) and a solid electrolyte memory have been contrived. For example, the phase change memory is disclosed in Proc. IRPS 2007, pp 542-546, “Data Retention Characterization of Phase-Change Memory Arrays” (Non-Patent Document 1), the MRAM is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-77267 (Patent Document 1) and Proc. IEDM 2003, pp 34.6.1-34.6.3, “A 0.18 μm 4 Mb toggling MRAM” (Non-Patent Document 2), the ReRAM is disclosed in Non-Volatile Semiconductor Memory Workshop, 2007 22nd IEEE 26-30 Aug. 2007, pp 68-70, “Nanoscale Resistive Memory Device Using SrTiO3 Films” (Non-Patent Document 3), and the solid electrolyte memory is disclosed in Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, No. 6, pp 1383-1391, June 2007. “An Embeddable Multilevel-Cell Solid Electrolyte Memory Array” (Non-Patent Document 4), respectively.